Silver-Owl Tools
Silver-Owl Detail
"Click the clock" to discover
|
Silver-OwlKeeping an informed eye
|
|
Our valuesBe straightforward
|
|
This website is designed to accommodate users with a 1024x768 screen size.
If you have a larger screen and the images below look slightly out of focus CLICK HERE to see larger, clearer images.
You can either read through and scroll down through the screen images and associated commentary
or go direct to the bit you are interested in by clicking on the links below:
Build a Project Plan
Define repeated tasks, e.g. weekly progress meetings
Assign people and specify dependencies
Use another plan as your template/starting point
Run the automatic scheduler to calculate your project's timescale
Upload key milestone dates into your Progress Reports
Generate charts showing task timelines and daily workloads
Each Task is entered and must be maintained to show the remaining hours work still to do
An earliest possible date may be entered if the task cannot be done immediately
The priority indicates which task takes precedence if more than one can be started
You can show if the time spent on a task must be continuous or can be split ...
... and whether all people assigned to the task must do it simultaneously
In addition to standard Tasks, you can enter Milestones (which have no duration or people) ...
... and Repeated Tasks, which can recur 'n' times or until a specified task or milestone completes
You can also enter documentary comments
A powerful set of conditions determine how Repeated Tasks are handled by the scheduler
Repeated Tasks can be daily, weekly, 2 or 4 weekly, and can occur until a specified task ends
If the task involves multiple people, you can specify what to do if someone is not available ...
... at the ideal time e.g. wait until they are, go ahead without them (useful for meetings etc)
Once tasks have been added to the plan, each must be assigned to at least one person
You must identify any other tasks that must completed before each task on the plan (Predecessors)
You can specify a gap between one task ending and the next task starting
The automatic scheduler uses this information to determine when each task can be done
You can create new versions of your plan, freezing the old version ...
... or use an existing or old plan as the starting point for a new plan for the same or another project
You can see a list of all tasks which do not have anything following (i.e. dependent upon) them
Ideally there should only be one final task or milestone on this list (e.g. final review)
Each plan may be 'Baselined', fixing the predicted start and end dates at a certain point in time
All booked Leave is automatically excluded from the scheduling process
You can see all Leave booked by your Team Members from the start of the plan
Once all tasks have been entered, people and predecessors defined, remaining time updated etc ...
... all you need to do to see when the project will be done is to click one of two Scheduler buttons
A Standalone schedule assumes all people are fully available and gives the optimum result
Scheduling against the Masterplan allows for commitments to other Plans, and is more realistic
You can match Milestones on this plan with Stages and Milestones on your Progress Report
Once you have run the automatic scheduler, you can synchronise the resulting Milestone dates ...
... by automatically loading the plan dates into the latest Project Progress Report
Signal colours are also recalculated
Once the plan has been scheduled, various Gantt charts can be produced, in A4 or A3 size
These can be based upon Standalone or Masterplan dates, for the whole project or just one person
They can exclude completed tasks to make the easier to read
The brown lines indicate the baseline
This chart shows how much work is done each day, on each task (up to 7 hours) in light blue
Dark blue indicates over 7 hours (which implies more than one person must be involved)
Green means simultaneous work by more than one person
The brown line shows the baseline duration
This version of the chart shows work for one selected person only
It includes any other projects for which the person has time committed to the Masterplan
